Day 16

3 AM - I guess it had to happen sometime. Of course I had always hoped that any Lyme left inside me would give me a break for 30 days, but that is a tall order for a disease that entrenches itself so deeply into tissue and organs.

It has always been that the more I do, the more I flush the bacteria out, resulting in what I refer to as an "outbreak".  I have to assume that the 102 km push north on Friday along with the wind I peddled into was enough to run my body down to the point where dormant Borrelia burgdorferi had an excuse to have a party in my veins.

In the last 12 hours, I have had classic rotating symptoms. It started about 3 pm Saturday in my throat, went to my sinuses, then gave me what I call the brain fog, and by 8 pm transformed into quite a pounding headache. Now, at 3 am, I have been woken up sweating with a fever and my stomach is on fire with pain.
 

8 AM -  Awake again, the pain in my stomach is still going strong.  I also have upper jaw pain from one side to another.  If there was any doubt (there wasn't), this is Lyme at its finest.

 

12:45 PM - Finally started north up highway 69 to Sudbury.  Not a heavy headwind, but it would have been much easier if there had been no wind at all.  I ended up doing 59.6 km by the time I was at the divided highway.

 

My motivation for enduring the pain was simple.  I simply keep thinking about the people I have met in the last few weeks that are so horribly affected physically by this disease and how I am so dam lucky to be limited to a pain in my stomach.  I don't think I am lucky to be where I am, I know I am.

 

I don't wish what I have been through on anyone, but really, if I could zap what has gone through me in the last 24 hours into some of those at the top that determine what we at the bottom of the healthcare food chain go through, I have no doubt that people like the ones I have met in the last few weeks would no longer be treated as second class citizens, and that finally something would be done to stop the spread of this disease.

 

One thing is certain, pain or no pain, I will be spinning my peddles east from Sudbury bright and early tomorrow.